8/6/23 Sermon
One of the most influential people in my life is this guy Dr. Ross MacKenzie who was a church history professor at Union where I went to seminary. But I never had him as a teacher. When I met him, he’d already left Union and was the director of the department of Religion in Chautauqua. He’s this really fantastic, wonderful Scottish man who has the most beautiful brogue and is exactly what you’d picture a Scottish theologian to be. He totally looks like he could have hung out with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien down to the tweed jacket and bow tie. His wife Flora was a beautiful and strong Scottish woman. In fact, Dr. MacKenzie was the reason I went to Union. I was originally going to go to Harvard Divinity - mainly so I could say I was a Harvard man. I’m sure I would have really fit the mold of what that looks like. I think they just liked my name. But I was told by the committee on Preparation for Ministry in my Presbytery at the time that I had to go to a Presbyterian Seminary. They didn’t like me. It’s a long story I’ll tell you another time. So, Dr. MacKenzie in his beautiful Scottish accent told me I was going to go to Union where he taught and I think partly because of his accent, I just agreed.
The best part was hearing stories about him and his wife from the faculty who used to work with him. Like the time one very conservative spouse of a professor ran a red light and crashed in front of Dr. MacKenzie’s house. Flora, his wife was working in the garden and ran to see if the woman was all right. The spouse of the other teacher said, “Oh thank God! Jesus had his hand on the wheel!” To which Flora responded, “Well next time tell him to put his foot on the brake!”
A story I heard about Dr. MacKenzie that I don’t know if it’s true but I hope it is, is that when he was a young boy going to grammar school in Scotland, his teacher was asking the kids in the class to stand up and say something that they learned over the weekend. Young Ross MacKenzie stood up at his turn and told his teacher he’d learned that there was a man named Jonah who was swallowed by a whale and three days later was spit up alive on the shore. The teacher apparently scolded him and told him that was impossible. No one could be swallowed up by a whale and live. It’s ridiculous.
Well, Dr. MacKenzie said, I learned it in Sunday school, it’s in the Bible, and I believe it. The teacher told him he could believe any stupid thing he wanted but it just wasn’t true. It was impossible. And then the teacher asked him, “How do you think that could even happen?” To which Dr Mackenzie who was like 8 or 9 at the time said, “When I get to heaven, I’ll ask Jonah how it happened.” And the teacher said, “What if Jonah’s in Hell?” And he said, “Then YOU can ask him…”
By the time I met Dr. MacKenzie, he was no literalist when it came to that story. But he taught me something important about reading scripture. He said to subvert all belief. Forget everything you’ve learned and everything you think you know about whatever scripture you’re studying and try to read it each time as though it were your first time and start asking questions from there. The first step he said, was to forget chapter and verse numbers and titles of sections in the Bible. They were all added a long time after it was written and was someone’s best guess. Make up your own mind, he told me.
And so today’s reading is usually broken up in a way where you’d think that verse 21 is the end of one thought and Jesus starts another thought with verse 22. But if we look at the context clues, we’ll notice that Jesus says “therefore” meaning it’s directly connected to the verses that precede it. Let us listen to the word of our Lord as we continue a little bit past our reading this morning into verses 22-31
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds!
Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life?If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest? Notice how the lilies grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith! Don’t chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them.
Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.
One day, Dr. MaKenzie took me into the bookstore in Chautauqua where he told me he ordered and bought me a book that he thought I should read. Dynamics of Faith by the theologian Paul Tillich. I read that book so many times it fell apart. It changed my life. In it, Tillich says that essentially faith is Ultimate Concern. That if you’re ULTIMATELY concerned with something, if it’s the center of your focus and your thoughts, then you have faith in it. And Tillich says that the problem is that oftentimes what we concern ourselves with ultimately - what we have faith in - isn’t something that’s ultimate at all. And they become little g gods that we then put above the big G God. We have gods that we put above God. The problem happens when we put ultimate concern in things that aren’t ultimate. Jesus says it a little less confusingly: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth”
To explain both Tillich and Jesus better because I think they’re saying the same thing: Is if you’re ultimately concerned about money. If its the driving force in your life or if you find it thinking about it more than anything else, you’ve turned money into your god and not God. Money becomes your little g god that you’ve put above the big G God. Your faith is in money because that’s what you’re ultimately concerned with. I don’t think that Jesus is saying being wealthy is bad. Maybe he is, but I don’t think so. What I do think he’s saying is that if you are pursuing wealth as the main driving force of your life, then it’s bad. You can’t do that and serve God. You have to pick one.
Now let’s think about who Jesus is talking to. He’s talking to people who are struggling to even make ends meet. They’re worried about things like how they can put food on the table and provide for their families. It isn’t an intellectual exercise for them. They’re in a very real situation of possibly not being able to feed their family and in the very real situation of even losing their houses and land. They’re worried about not being able to pay the bills on a daily basis. That kind of worry, that kind of situation can permeate every aspect of life. They say that finances are one of the leading causes of divorce in today’s world. They stress us out. It’s really really hard not to worry about it when you’re throwing the bills down the stairs and the ones that are closest to you are the ones that get paid that month. And you hope you can put off the others to next month. You think about it, worry about it, and sometimes panic about it all the time. Many of us have been or are currently in that situation.
So these worries about food, clothing, and shelter weren’t just random worries Jesus pulls out of the air and it isn’t the wouldn’t it be nice to have nice things worries. These people were very worried about their ability to put food on the table and clothe themselves. But Jesus tells them, you can’t be ultimately concerned about wealth and making ends meet and also be ultimately concerned with God. You have to pick one. It probably sounded as realistic and practical as Jonah being swallowed by a whale.
And then Jesus throws out the now famous consider the lilies and and the birds of the sky lines. And in Matthew’s reporting of this teaching, Jesus says these beautiful and important words: But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Now, these seem to be lines plucked right from the Don Worthington playbook of adulting. I grew up with this. My dad telling me to stop freaking out, to stop worrying about what may or may not happen in the future and focus on right now. And if I do what I’m supposed to be doing right now, if I’m taking care of the situation the best I can right now, then there’s really nothing else I can do and things will probably work out one way or another.
Honestly, it’s annoying when my dad says and it’s kind of annoying when Jesus says it too. My dad lives that way and Jesus did too and somehow they’re both right. We’re all sitting here because we have a 100% track record of getting through the worst days of our lives. Somehow, we’ve all made it through to the other side or we’re making it through to the other side. And Jesus is right. I can’t think of one situation in my life that’s better now because I worried myself sick about it. Usually, that makes it worse. That doesn’t mean I don’t still do it. I still do it all the time, but he’s right.
And here’s the thing I love about Jesus. This may be one of the main reasons I believe in him and take him seriously. He says strive for the kingdom and righteousness - ultimately concern yourself with God and being a good person and he kind of says things will work themselves out. But then he says something so important. Tomorrow will have it’s own worries and todays troubles are enough for today. He. Doesn’t. Say. Your troubles go away. He says they’re enough for today. Just because you’re a person of faith in God, just because you focus on building God’s kingdom, just because you try to be a good and righteous person, it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have troubles today or troubles tomorrow.
Being a Christian doesn’t mean life is all tip-toeing through the tulips and things are perfect. Being a Christian means that you consider the lilies. That even when things are hard and there are enough worries going around, you can know God isn’t abandoning you but God is somehow supporting you through it and providing for you to get through it. And the way you know it, where you find the trust in that isn’t just by looking out and seeing flowers and birds, but by the fact that you’re sitting here today. We’ve somehow made it this far. And I don’t know about you, but there have been times in my life where I questioned if I’d ever get through it. Yet, here we are.
Jesus isn’t saying that wealth is bad in my mind. He isn’t telling us to abandon our responsibilities or that we shouldn’t be concerned with how to provide for our family. He isn’t saying we should run away and live off the grid or like a hermit. He isn’t even saying that we can’t have nice things or things in abundance. But he IS saying that it shouldn’t be what we’re ultimately concerned with. He’s saying we should try to remember and really focus on what’s really important. He’s saying be a good person, try to make the world around you better, try to treat people graciously, try to be a righteous person, try to put your faith, your ultimate concern in God and focus on what you can change right in front of you now, today, and then worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
I want to shift our focus away from the wealth example and give you a practical contemporary one. We live in one of but not THE most divisive time ever - we did have a civil war where we killed each other- but it may be one of the most entrenched times ever in US history. Many of us lament this. We feel like we can’t have conversations with people about it. We feel like there’s nothing we can do to change the national “discourse” about it. And I think almost everyone agrees that we can’t keep going the way we’re going when it comes to how we talk about it and how the media talks about it. I don’t like being told I’m stupid and don’t understand or that I’m evil and hate America because I may not vote for the person someone else thinks I should. I can’t imagine other people like it. And to be honest, I worry about it. I am worried about what will happen regardless of who wins in 2024.
I dearly love people who feel very strongly that Trump is evil personified and I dearly love people who feel very strongly that he’s the best thing that ever happened to this country. And I dearly love people who say all sorts of nasty things about the other people I love and it breaks my heart. And honestly, I can’t change that. And I can’t change the news coverage. And I can’t change the rhetoric that anyone uses. And I’m worried about what will happen. But I have faith that if I do what Jesus teaches me to do, if I listen, if I truly listen in order to try to understand someone - not to change their mind but understand, if I don’t engage in hateful language and I call it out when someone else does, if I can participate in a dialogue of ideas without it being personal and inflammatory, it might not change tomorrow and it might not change the nation.
But it might change the people around me. It might model a way of moving forward without the hate and vitriol. It might show others that it’s possible to disagree and even love people who hold opinions that I may not even like or respect. I see open honest and hard dialogue around not only politics but religion all the time here at church and most of the time people are still friends and love each other. There are people here that I know we don’t agree on almost anything but I’ve not once doubted that if I needed them, they would be there in a blink of an eye. And that’s because we’re seeking the kingdom first. And I feel like Jesus is right. If we seek that kingdom first, if we can handle today the right way, then tomorrow will bring whatever tomorrow brings and I don’t have to worry about it today.
If we can model that kingdom here now today in how we live and speak and listen to others, then maybe others will see it’s possible too and slowly but surely things will change. But if we focus on God and God’s kingdom and the little section of the world we can change and affect today, then we’re doing all we can with the problems we face and we can go to bed knowing that at least this day we sought the kingdom right now, right here. and God will support us and help us take care of the rest of it.